WARREN, Ohio - Delphi Packard Electrical/Electronic Architecture's (Delphi-E/EA's) division-sponsored FIRST LEGO® League from Champion Middle School in Champion, Ohio competed against seven teams in a one-day competition on Dec. 8 and received the "Robot Design" award trophy.

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is geared to children ages 9 to 14 years old. The team is the middle school version of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team.

The teams of children and adult mentors receive a mini challenge based on the annual FIRST LEGO League research project. Using software called LEGO Mindstorm NXT kits, the team designs a robot illustrating an aspect of this year's "Power Puzzle" Challenge.

The Power Puzzle Challenge this year was on alternative energy. This meant the children had to complete a project on alternative energy as well as build a robot that fit into the challenge of alternative energy.

Mark Baka, Delphi team advisor and manufacturing system design/advanced industrial engineer, said the children preformed a skit on different types of energy and preformed an energy audit on Champion Middle School.

The Champion Middle School team consists of 10 students: Hunter Bates, Trevor Boehm, Jon Boyd, Vince Chiochetti, Sarah Hochadel, James Hochadel, Kyle McGaughy, Bardyn Shively, Robie Sumner and Tom White. Two Delphi engineers are on the team as mentors - Mark Baka, Delphi team advisor and manufacturing system design/advanced IE, and Barb Hummel, DCS CMII and prototype budget.

During the competition, the team won the Robot Design award trophy. According to the LEGO League Web site the award is given to a team whose work stands out for innovation and dependability. The judges interview team members to discover unique and inventive ideas, and they judge dependability on how the team reduced errors in the robot.

Baka said the team won because the design of the robot and the way the team explained the design of the robot was unique. The team's answer was unique because of how well the team explained how the robot was constructed, the attachments on the robot and the usage of the attachments to the judges.

The team started preparing for the competition in September and met every other day to practice preparing and presenting the robot. The team spent their time preparing for the competition by exploring, designing and building a model made with LEGOS.

"A lot of the children on the team are interested in the high school robotics team," Baka said. "This is the foundation for that team. Plus, the kids like to play with LEGOS."

Baka's hopes for next year are to spend a little more time on the game challenge itself.

"The children do well with the research but we need to work on the robot itself," Baka said. "But teamwork is the main thing in this competition, especially at that age; it's hard for kids to work together. It gets them exposed to science, technology and engineering."

FIRST was founded in 1989 by accomplished inventor Dean Kamen, in an effort to nurture an appreciation of science and technology in young people. With the support of many of the world's best-known companies, including Delphi, the not-for-profit organization hosts the FIRST Robotics Competition for high school students and the FIRST LEGO® League for children ages 9 to 14. To learn more about FIRST and the FIRST Robotics Competition, go to www.usfirst.org.